How Trans­par­ent nor­malis­es the com­plex­i­ty of female emotions

This year has brought us a whole host of TV shows with an entire­ly new, inti­mate approach to its char­ac­ters. For a long time, writ­ers and show cre­ators were focused on cre­at­ing love­able char­ac­ters, afraid to explore the dark­er ter­ri­to­ries of the human psy­che and the com­plex­i­ties with­in. This was espe­cial­ly so of female char­ac­ters. Audi­ences seemed far more accept­ing of male char­ac­ters whose midlife crises and gen­er­al­ly appalling behav­iours are deemed nor­mal, not just on screen, but in our cur­rent soci­ety. Whether they were like­able or not often seemed irrel­e­vant. Their neg­a­tive emo­tions and man­ner­isms are paint­ed as a prod­uct of their imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment. Their sto­ry­lines need them to be a cer­tain way in order to empha­sise the over­all atmos­pheres of these cre­at­ed worlds.

Break­ing Bad​’s Wal­ter White was hard­ly a like­able man, and yet, we found our­selves empathis­ing with his sit­u­a­tion and his per­son­al strug­gle. His cho­sen jour­ney into the under­bel­ly of the Mexican/​American drug world required of him to be ruth­less, nar­cis­sis­tic and dis­sat­is­fied. And while we may, at times, have been dis­gust­ed by his mega­lo­ma­ni­ac ten­den­cies and heart­less­ness, we always found excus­es for him in order to jus­ti­fy his actions and our idol­is­ing his char­ac­ter: he’s dying, he’s try­ing to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly, he’s try­ing to save his hon­our. Why aren’t we will­ing to do the same for strong, com­pli­cat­ed female characters?

We like to think of West­ern soci­ety as being pro­gres­sive and often fool our­selves into believ­ing that we’re well on the way to achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty. And yet, we still feel uncom­fort­able with the depic­tion of gen­uine, female emo­tions and the expres­sion there­of. Just as sex­u­al­ly adven­tur­ous women are still judged as being sluts, tena­cious women in tune with their own ambi­tions and desires are writ­ten off as bitch­es. Add to that a character’s open expres­sion of emo­tions and, soon an all too famil­iar, ugly word rears its head again: hys­te­ria. Watch a man van­dalise an entire apart­ment over a bad break-up or his team los­ing the big game and he’ll like­ly be applaud­ed for his raw mas­culin­i­ty or, at the very least, his behav­iour will be shrugged off as per­fect­ly nor­mal. Put a female char­ac­ter in the same posi­tion, and watch as the room cringes in awk­ward silence.

Appar­ent­ly we have not been able to move on from the idea that a woman gen­uine­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing her feel­ings – or indeed, act­ing out on her ​“loony” month­ly mad­ness – auto­mat­i­cal­ly sug­gests she is unsta­ble, weak or hys­ter­i­cal. And it’s not just men who react this way; many women have been raised on, and still live by this idea.
Now that women like Cat­a­stro­phe​’s cre­ator Sharon Hor­gan, Fleabag​’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Trans­par­ent​’s Jill Soloway have tak­en over our screens, the dia­logue sur­round­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of daunt­less women is rapid­ly chang­ing. In Transparent’s finest sea­son to date, Soloway chal­lenged view­ers to under­stand, accept and yes, even applaud her female character’s tem­pes­tu­ous, per­son­al jour­neys. There seems to be no dis­tinc­tion between Josh’s (Jay Duplass) down­ward spi­ral into lone­li­ness and his nev­er-end­ing quest to belong and Raquel’s (Kathryn Hahn) com­ing to terms with her grief and her strug­gle with her spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Both char­ac­ters are encour­aged to embrace their hon­est feel­ings, not only by the writer who penned their sto­ries, but by their sup­port­ing char­ac­ters as well.

In ​‘Life Sucks and then You Die’, one of the most mov­ing episodes of Transparent’s sea­son three, Raquel final­ly breaks under the pres­sure to ​“keep it togeth­er” – as a Rabi and a desir­able woman of her age. In a moment of sheer hon­esty, she allows all her bot­tled up pain, anger and frus­tra­tion to unleash, her screams echo­ing through the Syn­a­gogue and reach­ing all those who respect her for every­thing she is and is not. While her harsh words may be direct­ed at the peo­ple who care for her the most, they are capa­ble of side-step­ping their own egos, per­mit­ting her to hon­our her feel­ings and the release she so des­per­ate­ly need­ed. Though Sarah and Duvid (Kobi Libii) are obvi­ous­ly sur­prised by her seem­ing­ly sud­den out­burst, there’s no judge­ment. The ​“inci­dent” is not brushed under the car­pet, nor is it used as gos­sip fod­der or for fin­ger pointing.

The female mem­bers of the Pfef­fer­man tribe open­ly dis­cuss and exam­ine their own sex­u­al­i­ty and desires, and while their respec­tive pas­sions may not be under­stand­able to oth­ers, they are not ridiculed. The same is true of their per­son­al, emo­tion­al jour­neys. Though their respec­tive out­bursts may be unex­pect­ed at times, it is only because they hap­pen at the most seem­ing­ly ran­dom of moments, which is exact­ly where­in lies the beau­ty of Soloway’s writ­ing and her char­ac­ters. In doing so, she has nor­malised the female expres­sion of emo­tions, fur­ther high­light­ing the show’s quest to top­ple the patri­archy. They all have their momen­tary erup­tions, they release their ten­sions and then they move on. No one dwells on the insults thrown about in the heat of the moment, no one’s ready to call the men in the white coats. The Pfef­fer­man women are sim­ply allowed to move on from a place of strength and self-reflec­tion the same way men are in any giv­en sit­u­a­tion, bring­ing us one step clos­er to tru­ly embrac­ing female emo­tion in all its complexity.